reviews

​Hillstomp (from the album Monster Receiver available on Fluff and Gravy Records)Hillstomp reference North Mississippi Blues with their band name, dabbing additional musical style onto songs of their recent release, Monster Receiver that stretch and expand their sound. The push/pull need-to-knowers label Hillstomp. trying to put the Northwest U.S.-based band into a box of either Blues or Jam Band categories. While both elements are included in Monster Receiver, they are pieces of the whole musical picture. At their heart, Hillstomp are a dance band, raggedly relying on the rhythm of electric guitar chords, thick bass lines, and a pummleing drumbeat (“Comes a Strom”), fractured note patterns and a rhythmic thump (“Pale White Rider”), a Country ramble (“Dayton Ohio”), and frenzied mountain music (“The Way Home”).

Monster Receiverchannels a rhythmic Roots sound, finding influence from Appalachia to the Delta, Hillstomp change musical direction like a flashflood, its manmade course guided by the two men behind the music, Henry Hill Kammerer (guitar, banjo) and John Johnson (drumkit including buckets, brake drum, and broiler pan). Monster Receiver, produced by Fluff and Gravy Records head honcho, John Shepski, propels the sound of Hillstomp past border limits as they cascade the melody in sharp bursts of energy around “Snake Eagle Blues” and drift in a percussive trance over the graceful beauty of “I’ll Be Around”, joined on vocal by Anna Tivel. Hillstomp bring Anna Tivel back to help out on the rhythmic brutality of “Cluck Old Hen” as Monster Receiverlazily kick up chords of drifting sonics to give flight to “Angels” and escorts Hillstomp to the altar of raucous rhythm to testify in “Lay Down Satan”.